


Olive Garden

by Corvid_Knight



Series: Integrated Worlds [11]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, inspired by that one ending of friendsim where dave takes MC to olive garden? i think?, integrated worlds, mentioned csa, olive garden, the plan session for this was so long ago and i am sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:40:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28684218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: Therehasbeen progress, though. Perhaps one time in ten, the boy's not alone in the apartment; you have a face for theactualowner of the place. Sort of, anyway. You haven't managed to catch him without the odd sunglasses. Not that it matters; you don't need to run the man through a facial recognition database to know that you don't like him.Yantis Smith meets some interesting people at her job. Most people would leave it at meeting.Yantis isn't exactly "most people."
Series: Integrated Worlds [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/999555
Comments: 12
Kudos: 32





	Olive Garden

Your name is Yantis Smith, and you have years of experience passing as olive-blooded. (Yes, _years_ and not _sweeps_ ; on earth you use earth measurements, for time at least. Size and weight is another matter.) Technically, you don't need to be putting that experience to use right now; despite its name, this restaurant employs mostly humans, with a few of the other servers being trolls—two bronzes, a cheerfully psionic-dead gold, and an olive who grins at you in a way that makes you think he made the same assumption you did. 

The humans don't seem to be in on the joke. You're just fine with that, you think—it would be strange to be sought after for your blood color, at least when it's the one you lie about for _less_ attention. Not a horrible sort of strange, true, but still. Strange. 

Once you've worked out exactly what the other definition of _olive_ is (and took a detour on your way home one night to buy a jar of them and see if they're worth naming a restaurant after) (they're not) the job is just...a job. Not the worst you've ever had but not the best either. It's probably much _safer_ than some of the other things you've done, but you still treat it like it isn't; at this point, adopting something close to a fully separate work persona and not using your real name is more or less second nature. Makeup covers your pale green freckles, gel spikes your short hair up into sharp, deliberate points that make your horns look even smaller than they are, and you put _Delina_ on your nametag. 

Camouflage. Not _perfect,_ no, but you honestly don't have a prayer of looking human—almost no troll does—and this is the next best thing. Looking _normal_ , looking _not like you._ But you are still you, of course, and that means that you have something that's almost a sixth sense to detect people who have the same or nearly the same life experiences that you do. 

Those life experiences aren't exactly common, especially on this planet. It's nearly two months before that sixth sense pings at the back of your head, and at first you think you may just be interpreting it wrong—the person setting it off is barely more than a child, a pale boy with white hair that makes you wonder what, exactly, is wrong with him and dark glasses that make you wonder who, exactly, he's hiding from. It might just be how he looks that has your subconscious insisting he's another leftover from the last interplanetary conflict despite being young enough he might not have even been born yet during it...but no. There's something else. 

You watch him without really looking as you take orders from a different table, and eventually realize that it's about how and where he's sitting—at a corner table instead of a booth, back to the wall so he can watch the exit and the doors to the bathroom and kitchen at the same time. It's very much a spot you would have chosen, maybe not so much _now_ , but ten years ago, fresh from the hard and immediate lessons of _guard your back_ and _if you're trapped, you're dead_? Oh, yes. The boy's nearly a perfect mirror of you-then, down to the way he straightens up in his chair when you accidentally let him catch you looking. 

That's fear. Subtle, true, but still there. Sarah owes you a favor—she'll let you cover his table when he orders, you're sure she will, so you finish taking the order for the table you're serving and leave her to get him his breadsticks, planning to intercept when you get back from bringing out food. 

Except it doesn't quite work out that way. You turn back after setting down the dishes with a smile and see one more empty table. There's no way he could have been served that fast—you didn't even see him _order_ , what the hell? 

But it's busy, and you have to wait until nearly closing time before you can catch Sarah halfway through refilling spices to ask the question that won't stop annoying you. "What was with the boy earlier?" 

She doesn't look up from trying to pry open a jammed salt shaker. "The kid that threw the plate of soup?" 

"No." That was actually the high point of your day, mostly because of how proud you are of the speed with which you smoothed it all over. The family even tipped extra, and you _know_ Sarah can use that boost on her tips. "Before that—white hair, sunglasses? Looked like a, a ghost? I don't remember his order—" 

She does look up at that, with an expression you almost think is exasperation as she shoves the salt shaker at you. "Delina, I know you know that was my table." 

"I'm curious." The problem is that there's salt crystals pushed hard into the grinding component of the shaker. To get it unstuck, you have to screw it the wrong way first. "And you like to pass to go orders off on me—" 

"He didn't order." Sarah shrugs, taking the salt shaker back after you twist it a few more times to be sure it's fixed. She's not looking at you, which is more than a little interesting. "Just the breadsticks." 

"Oh." Hm. That's something new, to you at least. "Is that...normal?" 

"That kid's been doing it for a couple years, so I guess it is for him?" Sarah steps to another table, gathering up the napkins and salt and pepper so she can wipe the surface down. 

You're obviously supposed to take that as an end to this conversation. You do not do that. Instead you shadow her, moving to the table across the aisle to start cleaning it. "Years? Who is he?"

"I don't know, Delina, just some kid who wants free food." She grimaces and gives you a more than half serious glare that you pretend to not register. "What's with trolls and being nosy? Don't tell me you're going to quit without notice too." 

"I...have no idea what you mean." 

"One of the servers we had a while ago talked to him a couple times. Um—brown blood?" 

"Bronze?" There _are_ brown-blooded trolls, but it's one of those colors that sit between what's considered the proper spectrum, and most of them just slot themselves into either bronze or rust depending on the shade and how willing they are to lie about it. 

"Yeah, bronze. Anyway, he wanted to know about that kid too." Sarah shrugs and sets the pepper grinder back on the table, pushing it into the center with a little huff. "And then he quit. No notice or anything, he just stopped showing up. I worked two nights solo before management rearranged the schedule." 

"I'm not going to do that, don't worry," you reassure her. Hopefully she doesn't realize just how absent that promise is—you're already absorbed in just how much bullshit you'll have to sort through to make sense of this whole situation.

* * *

Later, laid out on the couch and your human ashen/pale quadmate's lap, you tell him what you saw and what Sarah told you and watch as his nose wrinkles up like it always does when he's considering a problem. You wait a minute, and then reach up to poke his forehead with an index finger. 

"Caegar for your thoughts, Kevin?" 

"You say that like you didn't already know all about them." He rolls his eyes and winds a strand of your hair around his finger, shaking his head at the crunchy feeling from leftover gel. "It's sketch. The kid's mixed up in something, obviously—you said he acts like he's got what, combat reflexes?" 

"Mm. I mean, that's where _I_ get those mannerisms. It could be somewhere else for him." 

"It's still not a great sign. And the other server—she said someone disappeared after they talked to him." 

"You sound like you have an idea about what that means." You know that _you_ certainly do. The boy's mixed up in something, even if you can't quite decide what it is without more information. 

Kevin just looks a bit uncomfortable, though. "I mean, you said he's a _kid_. I get that you could have intimidated an adult troll into leaving you alone when you were a teenager, but—" 

"Even I couldn't convince someone to just disappear." Well, probably not. "Words only go so far. Now, weapons? That's different." 

"...Yantis, I promise you you're reaching here. Human kids don't kill people." 

"Well, then." You smile at him, very sweetly, making sure he gets a good look at how much shaper your canines are than his. "You shouldn't have any issues with me digging a bit deeper then, right?" 

The way he rolls his eyes when he realize you've neatly backed him into a corner is priceless.

* * *

You have to wait two weeks before the boy comes in again, and it's Jayven working tables with you when he does. Your gold coworker's nicely distracted at the crucial moment, too; you catch his eye, nod at the table that you are definitely not in charge of covering, and just like that you've completed step one. 

Step two is the boy's breadsticks, and a dish of soup that you'll cover the check for just to make it that much less likely anyone actually notices what you're doing. The soup isn't strictly necessary, honestly, but this is a _kid_ , and he's thin enough that you wonder who's supposed to be in charge of him. 

Whoever it is isn't doing a good job, and from the brief look of panic that flashes across what you can see of the boy's face, that might be by design. Interesting, and not in a good way. "It's complimentary," you tell him. Technically not a lie, but the rest of your explanation is. "We're doing a special promotion today. You want me to let you check the menu and come back in a bit, sweetie?" 

He just slouches down in his chair and shrugs. Hm, you're not sure what you expected, but that works; you retreat to the kitchen and wait a moment to intercept Jayven as he comes to deliver a ticket. "Can you cover for ten minutes until Tennac gets here? My moirail texted—" 

"Yeah, go, it's pretty much dead anyway." Jayven flaps one hand dismissively at the main room, which currently has three tables occupied, not counting the boy who's probably about to abscond. "I'm keeping the tips from your table, though. I'll clock you out on time if you want?" 

"You're a lifesaver, Jay." Out of the corner of your eye you catch the door opening. Damn it, you thought you had more time. "I owe you one!"

* * *

You just barely manage to not lose him. The kid's fast, impressively so since he's on foot and not aware you're following—alright, so you _do_ lose him, actually. The only reason you manage to pick him back up is speed, intuition, and sheer dumb luck, and the luck is the only thing that keeps him from noticing you when you catch sight of white hair only a few steps in front of you. 

After that you hang back a bit. Not too much, though. You grabbed your sweater on the way out—a soft, pale violet thing that still feels almost hilariously long when you catch sight of your reflection—and you started finger-combing the spikes out of your hair as soon as you cleared the door, so he might not recognize you by now, but you still need to balance being spotted and losing him. It's oddly difficult; are you getting rusty? 

Hm. Maybe. But you're still good enough for today's needs; he turns to slip down an alley and you walk past slow enough to watch him hop up an improvised but clearly purposeful stack of trash and debris, catching the bottom of a metal scaffolding—no, fire escape, you have no idea why it's called that but you'll still use the right word—and hauling himself up. It's not a temporary solution, either; by the time you've retreated across the street and pulled out your phone like you're checking directions, he's halfway to the top of the building, and you watch as he pulls a window open and disappears inside. 

Good. That's all you wanted tonight—information. You know where he lives now, which means you can find him again and solve your little mystery later. The map you pull up gives you a nice, simple route to a bus stop; you study it, adapt it in your head so you can keep walking the same way you were going, and stow it away in a pocket.

Hm. You wonder if you should feel this excited about passing through what probably counts as the rough side of town. Kevin's going to be _so_ upset you didn't take him.

* * *

You're right and he is, but you let him come along on the stakeouts over the next few weeks. He's better with the remote surveillance equipment than you are, anyway; you lack the patience to get the focus tight and steady enough for this range, and it's decently important that you be able to get a look at the interior of the apartment through the window the boy disappeared through (and any other available windows) before you move on to the next step. 

Which you might not be able to do at all, from the way Kevin is frowning down through the viewfinder. "What." 

"Don't use your squad leader voice on me." He says it as absently as he'd reply to you trying to get him to tell you what's wrong with the DVD player _this_ time; now the tone just annoys you. You _are_ squad leader again, even if it's just you and him. This is _your_ task. God you really need therapy. "I count...three obvious cameras from this angle? No, four." 

Damn. "Are you shooting through the fire escape window?" 

"Not from here I'm not." _Here_ is a vacant office space in a building adjacent to the actual objective; you broke in. Not that it was all that difficult. "I think this is the main space. It's not the kitchen; that window's blocked." 

"By?" 

"If I had to guess? A shirt." Kevin looks up for a moment to grin at you. "Come on, it's a teenager home alone, he's not going to be all that neat." 

"Mm." A teenager home alone for long enough that he's taking advantage of whatever free food he can find. One who's legitimately afraid of receiving help, too, if his reaction to your giving him the soup is anything to go by. Something is wrong here. 

Your phone beeps, and Kevin sits back on his heels. "Want me to stick around and finish programming the presets so you can come back later?"

"Yes please." As much as you're tempted to ignore the alarm, you're not going to miss work with no notice. "Feel free to call me if you get caught and need to prove that you're supposed to be here, though." 

"Like I couldn't lie my way out of this on my own." Kevin snorts and blows you a kiss; you blow him one back and make a quick diamond-sign with both hands, before grabbing your jacket and slipping back out the door.

* * *

There isn't a way to get around the cameras. It takes you the better part of another month (and some minor property damage) to come to that conclusion, but it's fairly inevitable—they're definitely powered independently of the building's electricity, and you can't exactly set off any sort of organic or inorganic EMP in the middle of a city. It's...well, a problem, since you need to be able to get in undetected to plant your own cameras if you want to be able to gather any more information. 

You want information quite badly by this point. The boy—property records you've found suggest that he _might_ have the last name Strider, since someone with that name owns the top floor of this building outright—seems to have figured out your schedule and chosen to just work around it, which means you haven't really seen him since that second time. Caught a glimpse of him when you came in off the clock to retrieve your wallet, yes; been able to watch him or try to speak to him, no. 

It's frustrating. You hate this sort of helpless frustration more than anything up to and including the threat of losing limbs. 

But you're _stuck_. You can't get around the cameras. And then one day you're curled in the good chair at Kevin's place, working your way through a form (some kind of tax thing that you should _definitely_ be paying someone else to do) and he makes a startled sound that prompts you to look up. "What? Bad dream?" 

If it's a dream, he might still be having it—he's sat up instead of being sprawled across the couch with a pillow over his face, but he's still glassy-eyed and obviously uncoordinated, not even trying to focus on you. "Cameras." 

"Oh. Not a dream, then." 

"No—Yantis, there's cameras there already? You need—ah, shit." Kevin grimaces and gestures with both hands. It does not appear to have any sort of obvious meaning. "Like—you could—they're wireless, right? Bluetooth, Wi-Fi—" 

"Oh. Oh _shit_ , Kevin—stars and space you're smarter asleep than I am awake." Getting up and moving to the couch so you can reach to pet through his hair instantly complicates the upcoming task of contacting your old hacker friends to see if any of them are up for a quick job; you do it anyway. He more than deserves to be spoiled right now.

* * *

The girl who ends up meeting you at the empty office space you've more or less taken over is a mutant. That's not all that surprising; maybe half of your contacts are. Your support network during the war was...specialized, this hacker more visibly so than some. She's a pretty blueblood, irises shades too light to be cobalt and not green enough to be teal—off-colored, like you. Technically that's not a mutation, but the extra finger on each hand is and the faint webbing between them and vestigial scales that start high on her neck and run down to her wrists at least _definitely_ are. 

She's not hiding the latter anymore, either—the custom hot pink fingerless gloves are new from when you worked with her, and the dark, oversized hoodies that covered everything but the tips of her fingers have been swapped out for a pink shirt with ripped off sleeves and a black leather vest. The look she gives you as she settles down on the floor and opens her laptop almost dares you to say something about it. 

You spend a moment considering her (and fishing around in your memory for the name she prefers in person, rather than the one she uses online) before you make up your mind about what that should be. "I like the new look, Virus. You grew your hair out, right?" 

It's the right thing to say—she actually laughs, one hand coming up to finger the braid that lays over her shoulder, smoothing back a few errant strands that've made their way over the boundary of the close-cropped half of her undercut. "Yeah, and it was a _bitch_ too—between the boys giving me shit and having to learn to braid my own hair I almost buzzed it down again a couple dozen times. 's funny, though—I kind of wanted to get my hair like yours, and now you're down to short again." 

"Hm. Well, for a while anyway." You run a hand through your hair; for once there's no gel for your fingers to catch on. You're getting more than a little tired of the gel, honestly. "Mine grows fast enough that it'd take maybe a month or two to get it back to where it used to be." 

"Lucky, lucky." Virus flashes you a playful grin and leans down to examine the viewfinder of the high-zoom digital camera Kevin set up for you, her face going thoughtful as she pulls back again and settles down on the floor, pulling out her phone. "Is this freelance for you, or did you pick up a civvie job?" 

"You know I have too many morals to play detective for anyone else." You join her on the floor, albeit with your back against a wall that gives you a line of sight to the door. Hackers—they always let someone else have their backs. It's a consequence of covering everyone's asses digitally, you think. "Call it, I don't know. Curiosity? There's a kid who comes into where I work sometimes and something's just...off." 

Bright cyan eyes flick up to meet yours for a moment, then return to the screen. "You were always the one with the fucking _hunches_. Remember how much Seifen hated letting you follow them?" 

You do, but. "He did shut up after he nearly got his pan fried not listening to me." You

"He still has scars from that." She shrugs and pulls her shoulder bag around into her lap, extricating a computer that's much chunkier than the laptops you're used to and frowning at the screen as it boots up. "...you never do get curious about anything innocuous, do you." 

"I mean, no. But why do you say that?" 

"You have no idea how many layers of security the only network that's carrying enough weight to account for video streaming has. Even torrenting my good botnet it's going to be, like, half an hour." 

"Oh. I'm guessing that's a lot." 

Virus snorts. "Making fresh keys for state-level government systems takes about five minutes, so..." 

" _Oh_." You're...not quite surprised. Freelancers can have good security; if anything, this just implies that there's something going on outside the law. Like Virus's expression suggests, this is just an annoyance, not even a real setback. "Half an hour, hm?" 

"More or less." And she smirks at you in a way that makes you want to laugh. " ...wanna make out?" 

"Well..." You consider what Kevin would say, come to the conclusion that he'd tell you to do what makes you happy (he's said it often enough before, after all) and flash a smile back to her, spreading your arms. This is one of your old teammates, after all, and if you're going to say no to this with her who would you even be able to say yes to?

* * *

You certainly aren't paying attention to how much time passes after that. Virus might be, or she might not—she seems to be as preoccupied as you are, with pretty much the same thing. Neither of you lose track of your surroundings, though, and when the alert on her computer starts beeping you let her go fast enough that her move to slide off your lap and turn to kneel where she can see the screen is perfectly smooth. 

"Are you looking at my ass?" she asks absently, as you shift a bit closer. 

"The display, actually. Is it supposed to be doing that?" _That_ being showing a black screen with a readout of shifting white numbers that Virus is scrolling through. 

"Mm—I mean." She shrugs, glances over her shoulder at you, and looks back down. "It's not _normal_ , but I'll sort it out. There's just a couple too many channels to sort through without dedicated framework; I can either prioritize or just, you know. Make the framework so you can access what you want later without having to reset the priority parameters every voidcursed time." 

" ...oh." You consider that for a minute or so and come to the obvious and unwelcome conclusion. "Virus. I don't know what the hell you're talking about." 

Virus laughs. God, she's got a nice laugh. "Give me ten minutes and I'll make it so you don't have to."

* * *

What you end up with at the end of the day is a USB stick that makes your laptop bluescreen for five seconds every time you plug it in and then gives you the choice of a dozen camera angles in five rooms. (You also end up with Virus's personal contact information, but that's not the point.) It won't work unless you're within network range of the apartment the cameras are actually located in, which means you can't run surveillance from the comfort of your home or Kevin's, but that's okay. You've definitely had worse stakeouts. 

The routine you settle on, after a few more weeks of frustration, is fairly simple. When you get off work, you stop as far away from Strider's apartment as you can get and still be in the range the USB stick needs to function—not at a cafe or anything, just somewhere decently private and out of the way. The best place you've found so far is in an alley a street over, either next to or inside an overturned dumpster that you're fairly certain hasn't been used in a decade. You actually prefer sitting inside it; there's usually a cat in there, a little orange man who you're seriously considering bringing home with you.

If there's no activity on the cameras when you load up Virus's program—often the apartment's empty, or it's just the boy home alone doing what you think are normal human things—you go home. That's how it usually goes, which you guess is fine even though the lack of progress irritates you. 

There _has_ been progress, though. Perhaps one time in ten, the boy's not alone in the apartment; you have a face for the _actual_ owner of the place. Sort of, anyway. You haven't managed to catch him without the odd sunglasses. Not that it matters; you don't need to run the man through a facial recognition database to know that you don't like him. 

He hasn't done anything concrete to deserve that while you've been watching, though. He hasn't done much of anything at all, honestly; you're starting to get bored of hours of him working at one of the computers or hand-sewing odd puppet things. It's a good thing Virus didn't set things up to record, or you'd be fully out of memory by now. 

...maybe you're just being paranoid. You're really wondering if that's all this is, as you settle down in your spot and extricate your laptop again, plugging in the stick and working your fingers through the orange cat's long fur as the screen freezes and glitches for a moment. Survival instincts die hard, and there's nothing so terrible for your intuition to pick up on, so maybe...maybe you're just getting false positives. Maybe all there is to see here is a kid who realized he can get a free meal and thinks he's in trouble for it. Maybe you need to find a therapist. 

The screen goes fully black, and then blinks back on again, the homescreen loading a split second before Virus's interface does. Oh—there's movement for once, and some of the cameras seem to have been moved. 

You click on one of the moving thumbnails, parse what you're seeing, and fury hits you so hard you can't think, can't _breathe_. The elder Strider's standing, the younger's on his knees, and you're going to kill him. You are going to kill that man—that's a _wriggler,_ that's a _child_ , barely old enough to choose to quadrant with someone his own age. Too young for there to be any choice at all in what he's doing now—

The boy pulls back for breath and you snarl out loud when the man strikes him. It's a hard backhand that rocks the boy's head to the side; when he raises it again there's a thin trickle of blood running down from one nostril. Even if there was audio you don't think you'd be able to make it out over your own low growling, but something's obviously said—the boy flinches, nods, rises to his feet and retreats through the door that you _think_ leads to his room, as the man turns to start shifting the angle of one of the cameras. 

Fuck. _Fuck_. You lean back against the metal and close your eyes, trying to think. It's hard to do—the part of you that was raised in Alternian culture is screaming at you to act, furious at seeing someone forced into something sexual, at seeing a child hurt. This would be easier on Alternia—even if you didn't kill him, he'd never make it out of the building once you made his acts known. 

You realize, as you sit there with your head tipped back and your eyes pressed shut, that it _is_ known to someone. He's filming it. He's _filming_ it. 

This is Earth. You can't kill him. Instead, you let out a breath and pull out your phone, opening Kevin's chatlog. 

XY: Tell the violet cop you know to text me. 

CS: uh. what?  
CS: are you okay?

XY: _I'm_ fine. This is time sensitive, Kev. 

CS: oh god that's never good when you say it.

XY: You didn't ask if the situation was good, you asked if I was okay.   
XY: Actually. Don't have him text me. Send him to the apartment we've been staking out.

CS: shit. you finally saw something?  
CS: how bad?

XY: Bad enough that if I see the kid come up on the cameras again, you're going to have to come bail me out of jail. 

CS: ...don't kill anyone. please? for me?  
CS: he's on his way already, yantis. we'll figure out some reason for reporting later. 

XY: I'll admit to hacking the cameras and submitting a tip, if that's what it takes. 

CS: and then we'd have to explain why you can't actually show any of the evidence. you need to keep your hacker girlfriend off the radar even more than YOU need to stay off it.   
CS: look. i'm coming to get you. you need to not do anything, you know.

XY: Stupid?

CS: illegal?  
CS: i know he'd deserve it and i trust your judgement but we still need to do this the normal way. 

XY: Human way. 

CS: yeah. that.   
CS: yes, i know it's worse. for this at least. hell, for most things that have to do with protecting kids.   
CS: but we're on earth and there's only so much shit i can get you out of. i'm not one of your fixers and it sucks that i can't just tell you to do what you need to and i'll handle the aftermath, but...  
CS: ...uh. Yantis?  
CS: getting a little concerned about your continued presence here. 

XY: I was watching.  
XY: Your cop is there. The bastard let him in.  
XY: They're just talking, the boy isn't there—oh.   
XY: He came in. He's not dressed—that fucker put clothes on before opening the door, but I don't think the boy heard anyone come in.

CS: shit. that's what you saw.

XY: Them naked together and the man filming it? Yes. 

CS: if there's any evidence of that at all, the kid's going to be taken out of there. especially with a troll officer involved.

XY: Your friend has to know what's going on...I don't know how he doesn't just rip that bastard's throat out.  
XY: I know I couldn't have stopped myself from doing it. 

CS: me neither, and i don't even have claws.  
CS: where do you want me to pick you up?

XY: ...work. But I'm not leaving until I see him go. 

CS: i know you're not. i'll be there when you're ready, though.  
CS: ♦

XY: ♦

You don't even close the window, just drop your phone into your lap to keep watching pretty much nothing happen on the laptop's screen. They're talking. The boy...damn. You flick through the other views and finally find one of his room, letting out a slow breath as you watch him pull a shirt on, jam what you think is his phone into a pocket, circle the room a time or two like he's looking for something he forgot. 

He stops and reaches up to shove both hands into his hair and pull, hard, and you grimace in sympathetic discomfort. You know how it feels to have your life ripped apart, and it's got to be even worse than that for him right now—he doesn't have any promise of safety beyond tonight, probably no memory of it to fall back on for even that thin comfort. Sure, he'll be safe—the violetblood will see to that—but from where he's standing, it doesn't look like that. 

Fuck. It's going to make Kevin worry at least a bit, but you can't close your laptop until you see the boy leave.

* * *

Eventually he does.

* * *

Later, you give Virus back her USB stick. She sees the look on your face and doesn't ask about it, not directly. Instead, she asks you if she can help with anything else. 

You ask her to keep tabs on the boy.

* * *

Even later, you ask for your hours to be changed so you can start in on...well. A new side job, using skills you learned before you worked out how to utilize your hunches for the side you ended up on in the war that some people don't even know happened. It pays well; medic work for people who don't particularly want to visit a hospital usually does. No one ever ends up dead, which is even better. 

And it's easier to reassure yourself that the boy you saw getting free breadsticks is alive when you can see him two nights out of ten, winning fights against whoever cares to stand in the ring. Maybe not the _best_ outcome, but...

Good enough.


End file.
